


healing

by zauberer_sirin



Series: #CousyComfort [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Cooking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Not Leo Fitz Friendly, Post Season 5, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 14:58:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Written for the #CousyComfort challenge at johnsonandcoulson.com - Coulson offers to take care of Daisy.





	healing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



It feels weird to be back in the Playground, even though there’s no danger now - they are no longer wanted criminals - it feels like something is missing, something is tainted.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Coulson tells her from the doorframe.

Daisy hold Fitz’s lanyard on top of the box she’s packing.

“Well, I don’t think Simmons is coming back to pick these up.”

“No, I’m saying _you_ shouldn’t do that.”

He walks up to her and takes her hand away from the lanyard. It’s forceful enough to feel unfamiliar. He looks angry - but not at her, Daisy realizes as his fingers are still wrapped around her hand.

She makes some calculations. What times is it in England? Simmons wanted a funeral, even without a body. Daisy doesn’t think anyone else from the team are going.

But they are not here, either.

Just her and Coulson.

She doesn’t know if they are ever coming back - Mack and Elena have earned an extended rest at least - and she can’t bring herself to think too much into the future. She can’t think beyond the next five minutes, if. Daisy looks around, the immediate task at hand. So many belongings still to pack,

“This is my fault,” she says.

“It’s absolutely not,” Coulson replies. His tone is again like the hand stopping her from sorting through Fitz’s things, where Coulson is normally soft and hesitant, never imposing.

“I should have found a way-”

“It wasn’t your job to find a way. You saved everybody.”

“Fitz-”

“Made his choice,” Coulson says, sounding definitive. “He made the show to strap you to a table and torture you. He made the choice to believe Hydra’s lies about what was coming. And he made the choice to-”

“Try to stop me from saving you,” Daisy fills in, remembers. It was a different kind of betrayal to that of the pain of a scalpel cutting into her neck. “He thought it was the only way to-”

“He was wrong,” Coulson interrupts her again. He does that every time she tries to excuse Fitz.

She sits on the bed - Fitz’s and Simmons’ bed, she registers with a shiver - too tired to fight Coulson. A bit comforted by his anger.

Immediately Coulson walks up to her once more, like he’s following her wherever she goes, and sits by her side. Suddenly Daisy is no longer sitting on her dead friend’s bed, no longer sitting on the bed of the man who tortured her. Suddenly she’s just sitting next to Coulson and she doesn’t know how to thank him for that.

“How long has it been since you sleep?” he asks, his voice softer now.

Daisy thinks about lying, scrambles for some energy left to put on a fake smile for Coulson - even if Coulson being Coulson he’d probably know anyway. But knowing he can see through her like no one else has never stopped Daisy before.

“I don’t know,” she admits, the words just rolling off her tongue.

“You’ve saved the world,” Coulson says, sounding like he’s afraid she might have forgotten. “You need to take a breather. You deserve a break.”

“I… I don’t know if I’d know how…” she confesses.

“You should have someone who takes care of you now,” he tells her. “You’ve done enough.”

“Sounds nice, but-”

His hand finds her hand.

It’s warm and rough and Daisy can’t remember the last time someone touched her with gentleness - she does, it was Coulson, it was that terrible hug - and she thinks the gesture might split her open.

“I’ll do it,” Coulson says. “I’ll help you rest and get back on your feet. If you let me.”

She lets him.

 

+++

 

The next week they spend almost completely alone. 

Their old base is more equipped than the Lighthouse, luckily, so they don’t have to leave for food or news. They have everything they need in here.

Daisy thought that Coulson was just using an expression with the whole taking care of her thing, but she soon finds out that he means it. He finds clean clothes for her, and changes the dusty bedsheets on her bunk. Daisy keeps thinking of the word “pampering”, a word so alien and it makes her feel a bit guilty, Coulson shouldn’t have to do this. The only time the word “pampering” had ever entered her life was that first birthday with Miles when he brought her breakfast in bed. There is nothing paternalistic in this “taking care” that Coulson is doing, and she wonders if Coulson could ever be paternalistic. Daisy doesn’t feel like he thinks she’s week and needs to be spoiled, she doesn’t feel it’s a judgement on his part, or like she is a failure for needing help. And maybe she doesn’t need help -

\- maybe she just _wants_ it.

She spends most of the first day sleeping, or resting in a half-sleep, crying herself to sleep (technically crying herself to _nap_ , Daisy thinks, in the first glimmer of humor in her head since all this ended), and walking zombie-like from her bunk to the toilet and back.

It’s the middle of the afternoon when she wakes up for good and finds Coulson cooking for her in the kitchen.

“It’s not the same with powdered eggs but…” he says as he makes her an omelette. “Hey, you don’t have to be here, I can bring it to your room.”

She shakes her head.

“It was getting a bit stuffy,” she says. And a bit… empty. Only her thoughts. Not a good idea. She had come out to seek Coulson out, his company.

She enjoys watching Coulson cook, she’s not sure he’s done it before in her presence. She also enjoys knowing he’s cooking especifically for her. She feels a pang of guilt, because she should probably be wishing he could cook for the whole team, instead of enjoying the attention. She tries but it’s not use, she doesn’t wish he was cooking for the whole team. She remembers his words, about how someone should get to take care of her. The memory doesn’t make all the guilt go away, but it helps.

“We don’t have fresh veggies, but I made do with frozen.”

“They’re very good,” Daisy says.

Suddenly she realizes she’s been hungry, can’t remember when was the last time she ate hot food at all. She wolfs it down, rising a satisfied, almost proud, smile in Coulson. She wipes her mouth, a bit embarrassed. It’s delicious.

It’s the best fucking food she’s ever tasted.

“Bad news is,” Coulson says, sitting to eat by her side. “All those robot explosions… The kitchen is the only place where the pipes aren’t busted. I’m trying to repair the bathroom so we can have running water there but, it’s going to take a while.”

He grimaces.

Daisy wants to wash her hair anyway. All of the sudden it becomes a necessity. She can’t remember the last time she did that either. Probably when she scrubbed her body clean, hurriedly, just after Fitz gave her back her powers.

“Can you help?” she asks him after dinner.

This old-fashioned base still has a bathtub, which of course agents rarely used back in the day. It’s the perfect solution to the problem.

Daisy soaps up her hair and Coulson brings her the hot water from the kitchen. She closes her eyes while his fingers slip through her hair, pushing the soap out. He massages the back of her neck too, a comforting circular movement, his thumb unknotting her muscles. She doesn’t ask why he’s doing it, Coulson seemed to instinctively know it would make her feel better. He did say he was going to take care of her. Is this it? Daisy lets it happen, wishing it could already happen again, his fingers over her damp skin.

Afterwards she looks at her neck in the mirror - thinking it’s unfair that there’s a scar where Fitz cut into her, but Coulson’s touch leaves no trace.

 

+++

 

They don’t start sleeping together until the second day.

The first night Daisy is plagued by the expected nightmares. She tries to hide it, but it becomes evident the next night, when she’s so hesitant to go to her bunk.

When she tells him Coulson is not surprised, like he has been waiting for her to say something.

“My bed is bigger anyway,” he adds to the original offer.

He is so casual about it it makes things easier. 

Coulson is good at making things easier for her, which -

\- it shouldn’t be one of the reasons why she loves him but inevitably it is.

The prologue makes it seem more normal, like they are camping together. She brushes her teeth and washes her face in his sink, and leaves her stuff all over his room. Like they are becoming roommates. 

She goes to sleep on her side of the bed ( _her_ side of _his_ bed), giving him space, not wanting to intrude on his rest, her back turned towards him. A glance over her shoulder and she thinks he might be amused at her modesty. When nightmares wake her up only a couple of hours later Coulson holds her until she falls asleep. She prides herself in not making a sound, how he wouldn’t even notice her sobs if she wasn’t shaking in his arms. She falls asleep because Coulson is too warm and tender not to fall asleep to.

When she wakes up in the morning he is not there, but she can hear him nearby; probably that is intentional. She can imagine Coulson struggling to decide: not wanting Daisy to maybe freak out upon waking up next to someone else, but not wanting her to feel abandoned either. It makes her chest ache, thinking about him making that choice.

 

+++

 

On the third day it starts feeling like a routine to her. In a good way.

She wakes up and Coulson is making breakfast already. He’s already showered - or well, he’s already heated up some water and poured it over himself in the old bathtub, his hair short enough he doesn’t need help washing it (would he even want her help? she wonders)

She doesn’t touch the internet but she catches up on some reading - but still work related, she can’t help it, updates on internet security protocols, basic notions of physics, engineering, architecture, so she will be able to use her powers on buildings, structures, more safely. There are still DVDs, videogames, in the base, she wastes hours with those. She keeps herself numb, just trying to get her energy back first, before allowing herself to feel the weight of what has happened.

And then there’s Coulson, trying to fix a too-broken base, Daisy helps with that, normally in the afternoon when she feels stronger, and after washing up a bit. He cooks all the time - she tries to help with that a bit, too. She’s always been an awful cook, it’s not a bad moment to learn some basics. It’s something to do with her time, anyway. Coulson tries to keep her focused on something else, rather than the events of the previous weeks, what’s on her head, her memories, or the fear of what might be happening outside, while she is taking this break.

Sometimes they play a game of cards, which Coulson inevitably loses, hard as he tries, even against a distracted Daisy; he’s not that bad a player and that leads to his gentle prodding and Daisy’s tall tales about how she learned poker, why she _had to_.

She likes the way Coulson’s brow creases, amusingly, as he concentrates, desperate to win at least one hand.

 

+++

 

By the fourth day she has stopped just noticing how much Coulson touches her - little casual touches of encouragement, a hand on her shoulder, a caress on her cheek as they go to sleep, or, Daisy’s favorite, the way his fingers would dart across the small of her back when they walk together - and she has started leaning into it, responding in kind, becoming greedy with Coulson’s touch, his embraces and hand-holding.

Until now it was only at night that Daisy had allowed herself to touch him, hold on to him, curl around him, only in the darkness, and only when he was asleep. As if the nightmares somehow give her permission.

That starts to change and even today, as he is making lunch - the best part of Daisy’s day, watching him cook for her, watching someone put that much effort and love into something for her - she comes up from behind and hugs his back. Briefly, she lets him go in a moment. Coulson says nothing, doesn’t act like there’s something out of the ordinary. Maybe he thinks Daisy’s trying to thank him for the last days? She’s not. This is purely selfish. 

It feels good to be selfish.

Next time he washes her hair he also dries it afterwards, patiently toweling the wet strands, sitting on stools in the bathroom, Daisy feeling how drops of water dampen the collar of her t-shirt.

It occurs to her afterwards that there’s no reason why the hairdryer wouldn’t work.

 

+++

 

“Is your record player still around?” she asks, and on the sixth day of their break the base, seemingly more ghostly than ever, fills with music from his old vinyls.

Daisy sits on the couch with a cup of hot coffee - instant, all they have left, breaking both their hearts - and just listens as jazz and soul tunes turn the edges of the world into something softer.

Coulson watches her from the door, not intruding, and Daisy closes her eyes under his attentive glance.

 

+++

 

“You don’t have to think about that just yet,” Coulson says when he catches her in the gym, fingertips pressed against one of the punching bags.

“No,” she agrees. “I don’t want to think about it.”

But in the back of her mind she knows Coulson’s gift of a healing holiday can’t last forever. Even though Daisy (weak, greedy) wishes it could.

He grabs her hand and pulls it away from the bag, offering his fingers instead, threading them with hers, filling something that was missing. She likes that this gentler version of Coulson is also more proactive. As if Daisy was the one thing he didn’t have to be hesitant about.

“Come on,” he says, tugging at her hand. “Let’s make lunch.”

It’s all Daisy does: eating Coulson’s food, sleeping, playing, feeling Coulson’s caresses.

No wonder she doesn’t want this to end.

 

+++

 

A week or so into their new routine Daisy finds herself waking up to Coulson still very solidly lying next to her, Daisy’s arms wrapped around his middle. His deep asleep breathing making his chest move under Daisy’s hand. Fascinated Daisy props herself on one elbow to take a look at him: he looks small and unguarded, fragile, something to be protected, like a harmless little animal. A bird that flutters - his heart - between her hands. She’s never seen him like this and she can’t stop watching, delighted at finding new sides to him.

And then Coulson opens his eyes and she’s not even ashamed she has been watching him sleep for god knows how long.

He doesn’t seem disturbed by finding her face and her eyes first time in the morning as he wakes up. He just smiles at her, as if this is normal between them.

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his eyes in a truly boyish gesture Daisy had never seen in him before. “I’ll get started on breakfast.”

“It’s okay,” she says, her hand splayed over his chest, her fingers starting to move playfully over his t-shirt. “I think it’s Sunday, you can probably sleep in.”

He gives her a sleepy grin and for a moment Daisy thinks he is about to take her up on the offer and just go back to sleep, and maybe curl into her touch. But he doesn’t.

“Sunday, uh?” he says. “Should we make pancakes?”

The berries are from the freezer, but Coulson’s sharing her love of delicious, probably-unhealthy food doesn’t get old. The breakfast becomes lunch and they are still at the kitchen table, talking. She takes pride in making Coulson laugh as much as she takes pleasure in his uncanny ability to raise a smile out of her - even now, even after it’s only been a handful of days since… the intrusive images still come, but it’s easier to push them away, or easier to swallow them, her sense of guilt lulled by this strange routine.

Eating and sleeping and Coulson.

For a moment Daisy forgets there’s anything else to life.

She takes a long nap on the couch, listening to Coulson’s records, while the comforting noise of his steps around the base facilitate, rather than disrupt, her sleep.

“Some good news finally,” Coulson says when she wakes up. “I’ve finally fixed the plumbing. We can take showers now. Hot ones even, I’ve checked.”

“Yeah? That’s great.”

He looks so proud about it, she doesn’t have the heart to let him know she’s a bit disappointed.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, reading her face.

“Nothing, just…” she’s weak. Coulson has made her weak. All this past week he has made her forget decades of carefully constructed mechanisms to protect herself. To avoid needing anyone, because she knows no one would truly be there for her. “I kind of liked it when you washed my hair.”

She watches as Coulson swallows.

“I don’t have to stop,” he says.

His voice sounds strange, charged, and in a moment Daisy understands a lot of things about what’s been going between them in the last few days, in the last few years.

 

+++

 

He was right, the hot water works, and Daisy finds her skin tingle at the idea of a proper shower.

She undresses slowly, just like Coulson is doing - she thinks he’s carefully following her lead, watching her face to make sure this is the right decision. There’s almost a challenge in their gazes. Daisy bluffs her way through her doubts, her fears (what if she loses him instead of getting closer to him?), and stares at him with both real and performed hunger.

At first he just washes her hair, just as he promised, as if they weren’t naked in front of each other, and about to…

Daisy closes her eyes and lets the warm water fall over her face, like a kind of cleansing. She keeps her closes as Coulson touches her, working the shower gel into her hair and massaging her scalp. He takes his time - applying all the care and affection Daisy has been surrounded by this past week - and though his gesture is not exactly sexual she finds it exciting, the way it mixes desire with comfort for the first time in her life. She lets out little moans of pleasure as the massage goes on and she imagines Coulson, a little smug, smirking at her.

When he finishes - she opens her eyes and there he is, a familiar face made unfamiliar, illuminated, the water falling on his naked body - Daisy does the same for him. She wants to show him she can take care of him as well. She realizes how much she has wanted to touch him, too, not just having touch her. To offer the same comfort he has lavished on her, for so long, not just this week. Her touch is more gingerly than his, hesitant at first, enjoying the strength of his shoulders, old scars invisible but noticeable under her fingertips. It’s a pleasure to run her hands over his short hair, watch his expression light up as she goes on, his lips parting a bit when Daisy touches a particularly sensitive stop on his neck, under his ear. There it is again, the boyish gesture - as if Coulson had lost something a long time ago, as a child, just as Daisy did, and he had been missing it all this time. Something almost maternal in the way they are seeking each other under the shower now, mixed up with desire.

She pushes the soap out of his hair with her fingers.

“Thank you,” he says.

“You’re welcome.”

This polite exchange the only words inside the shower booth so far.

Daisy touches his cheek, wraps her fingers around his neck, gently pulling him, gesturing for him to come closer.

The first kiss tastes too much of water, soap, the steam beginning to surround them. It’s slippery and somehow frustrating, like they want to feel the other person completely in just one kiss, one touch, and that’s impossible.

The second kiss - distracted by their hands exploring each other’s bodies - is much better, slower, tongues playfully touching. Moans mix with the sound of water, and makes them smile against each other’s teeth. Daisy can’t stop running her hands over his chest, the same chest she had clung onto during the night all this time, now it’s different, like belonging to another person, strange and sexy, wet, all that hair, the scar that only makes Daisy feel grateful Coulson got a second chance, and she got the priceless chance of meeting him. It’s seeing his scar and Coulson seeing her reaction that their previous carefulness disappears, or rather melts into something else, something fast and unhinged. They are not unhinged people, and Daisy is glad to find a body she feels so safe with, pressed to her body.

He lifts Daisy by the hips easily - his solid hands, the same that hold her at night - and slips inside her just as easily; Daisy aroused from having seen him naked for the first time, the joy and surprise of discovering the body of someone she already loved. And then gets easier still, his body fitting so perfectly, filling her even as he gives himself up to her, a new wave of arousal cutting through her upon finding out she could love Coulson even more than she already did, a thought that had never crossed her mind, cause she didn’t know there could be a _more_.

 

+++

 

Droplets of water staining the kitchen table, falling from her hair.

Coulson toweling her long hair.

He’s done this before, but of course it’s different.

Daisy pressed her thighs together, excited all over by his tender touch, and by the memory of what went down in the shower minutes ago, the image of Coulson dropping to his knees to go down on her almost as immediately as he came, his tongue lapping his own come between her legs. She bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from whimpering at the thought, barely believing that was real. The clean clothes she’s wearing suddenly itchy in a very pleasurable way.

“Are you okay?” Coulson asks, threading his fingers through her hair, checking she doesn’t regret it or is freaked out by this new phase in their relationship.

“I’m fine,” she tells him, lifting her fingers to his cheek, like making sure he really is in front of him.

He nods.

“I’m really excited to make dinner for you tonight,” he tells her, with an eagerness that surprises Daisy. This is a new Coulson, another side of him she gets to know.

“Why, is there something good?”

He shrugs. “No, I’m just excited to cook for you.”

Daisy nods, gently scraping her finger across his jaw. The first time he cooks for her after they’ve become lover. She gets it. It’s different. It’s not about taking care of her - well, it is, because Coulson has never stopped taking care of her since they met. But not just that. That’s what's new about his expression of excitement; it’s romantic, he thinks it’s romantic.

Daisy chuckles softly, having found him, out, and presses her mouth against his confusion. 

It’s going to be a late night dinner.


End file.
